Lyndie Wright
‘I don't think there's ever been a week when I haven't either painted, carved, or done something in all the years.’
Lyndie Wright
Lyndie Wright has been designing and bringing remarkable puppets to life since her youth. She and her sister grew up in a house where there was no art, yet their passion for painting was undeniable from a young age, resourcefully employing any materials at their disposal. Her creativity evolved into a fascination with string puppets and as her art school training in South Africa came to an end, she happened across the work of puppeteer John Wright, who was touring in South Africa. In true ‘Lyndie’ style, she immediately asked for a job and, one month later, was a member of the touring company.
After moving from South Africa to England in 1958, she attended Central School of Art in London as a painter. In 1961, Lyndie and her now husband, John Wright, founded the renowned Little Angel Theatre. Living in the little cottage next door to the theatre, with the workshop between, Lyndie and John together defined the landscape of British puppetry at the time. Puppeteers and craftspeople trained with them, joined the company, brought materials to life in the workshop, ran the box office, poured the coffee, toured in the van and watched the shows in their countless iterations and locations. Having been inspired by John and Lyndie’s work, those puppeteers have in turn created and grown theatres and companies across the world from Scotland to South Africa, across Europe and the USA.
At home, puppetry was not just a work activity; it was an essential part of everyday family life. Lyndie Wright’s children, nurtured in an environment saturated with art, have pursued successful creative careers of their own; Sarah Wright is a puppeteer, puppet director and the founder of the Curious School of Puppetry, and Joe Wright a renowned film director (Pride and Prejudice, Atonement, Anna Karenina, Darkest Hour).
Lyndie Wright’s workshop remains a hive of daily activity, as her profound love for her craft makes the thought of stopping unthinkable. ‘What would I do if I stopped?’ she says. ‘I love what I do.’
Below, Lyndie is in conversation with her daughter, Sarah, filmed and photographed in her workshop in Islington.
‘Lyndie Wright: The Curious Art of Puppetry’
A film by Manuela Wirth, Claudia Delgado, Tamás A. Méder, Mengyao Zhang, Paige Fisher, Ana Germano, Liv Walde, Tamás Jeszensky, Iszlai József, Elena Bazu and Clio Ropa.
Archival footage by Derek Beck, Gren Middleton, Mike Pierce. Show in Greece by Glyn Edwards.
Lyndie’s Puppets
Lyndie & Sarah in Conversation
Lyndie’s Puppetry Beginnings
Sarah: How did you know that puppetry was the form you wanted to work in?
Lyndie: Well, I think it was the variety because I found that you could do so much with it. It was limitless in a way, and I found that all of my skills could come out in puppetry.
I have always felt that puppetry is a problem-solving thing.
All the time, you’re changing materials and working with different materials, but I find now, as I've gotten older, that I have selected materials that I like to work with. Still, there’s just so much scope. Whether you're making something solid or something in cloth, you never get tired of anything.
I like the fact that the innocent and the gruesome could work side by side.
I find that really exciting. You can put on a show that has a really hideous witch who is terrifying, but at the same time, there's an innocence there, which I love.
Sarah: But you were also interested in sculpture?
Lyndie: Yes, when I first came to London, I thought I'd either like to work with John Wright or Henry Moore. I wasn't quite sure which one. I didn't give Henry Moore the option. I joined John. The puppeteers said, “Oh, thank goodness you went to John Wright because just imagine the weight of the puppets if you got Henry Moore!”
It always felt natural to work with Dad. Because he was 30 years older than I was, at first, it was much more that he was the tutor and I was the student. In the end, I think I learned as much as he knew, so we worked on the same plays together.
Sarah: You talk about innocence quite a lot. You definitely create worlds that are fun, safe, and beautiful. I remember getting really angry about that as a teenager because the world that I saw outside this building wasn't beautiful or innocent.
Islington in the 60s and 70s was pretty tough, and I had come home to this workshop, and you'd be creating these beautiful things with such spirit and love. I just got really angry with you. The world's not like that. You created beautiful things as a child to make up for that.
Lyndie: I grew up in South Africa during wartime, and there wasn’t much going on. There was no travelling theatre or anything. All I ever saw was a circus about once every five years.
Extraordinarily, in the town I grew up in, a man decided he wanted to build an arts centre. He persuaded the educational authorities to let him build it, and it was amazing because the teachers at school knew I painted and crafted things and suggested I went along there. I made puppets there, too.
I straight away decided string puppets were interesting. I made little papier-mâché heads at home, and my mother's oven was always full of little things drying. Where did the idea of string puppets come from? I have no idea. It's just something that I felt would work.
Then, my husband's tour company came to Pretoria and performed at the centre. I remember watching this and being amazed. My sister was also an artist, so we egged each other on. She became a painter, and I was a puppeteer, and we always worked together. That was just a wonderful companionship.
The Joy of Creation: No Rules, Just Expression
Lyndie: I don't think there's ever been a week when I haven't either painted, carved, or done something in all the years.
We used to go on holiday, and I always took paintings to do, and John always did writing. We always had this arrangement, and the children had to fit in with whatever was going on.
Sarah: That was Dad as well, wasn’t it? You definitely found a kindred spirit.
Lyndie: I just remember going into the churchyard and painting some crocuses one day and thinking, “My God, this is wonderful, just to paint!” I always imagined that the painting was as important as the puppetry, but—
I’ve learned that it doesn’t really matter what you’re doing. You’re tapping into the same bit of yourself, whether it’s painting or sewing or whatever.
It doesn’t seem to matter.
Sarah: You get frustrated when you’re fulfilling other people’s work. As a craftsperson, sometimes you make a table or a puppet to someone else’s design. There’s a difference between a fine artist and a craftsperson, which sometimes has to do with the relationship with why you’re making that thing.
You are an artist. I sometimes find myself explaining that to people who have commissioned work from you. They go, “Well, it wasn’t exactly what I described.” I tell them, “I told you! She’s an artist; she’ll listen to you, and it’ll go out the other ear, and she’ll make exactly what she wants!”
But there have been times when you haven't been able to do that, where someone else is commissioning you. You've been like, “Of course I can do it. I'm bored with it. I've made five of these already. I want to go and do something else.” But painting felt like it was something you could do. At a certain point, you had more control of it; it was privately yours, and you needed that part of your script to come out as well.
The Craft of Puppet Building
Sarah: This one’s probably one of your favourite puppets, isn’t it?
Lyndie: It is; I’m rather fond of him.
Sarah: Why do you love him so much?
Lyndie: I think because he's got a sadness about him, which I love.
Sarah: When you created him as a character, how did you decide what the expression should be? Do you know the expression before you start carving?
Lyndie: Yes. He had to go through a lot, poor chap. Things are quite disastrous in his family.
He has leather hands and lead in his fingers so he can change the bend of his fingers. I think you’re always experimenting when you're making, and things just happen, and then they become part of your style.
Sarah: Did you make the costume for this one as well?
Lyndie: Yes. I always make the costumes for them.
Do you remember when someone once came into the back of the theatre, and you and I were operating a puppet together? They turned to whoever was showing them around and said, “How long does it take to train to do that?” And she turned around to them and said, “I think you have to give birth to them!”
It's always so amazing picking up a puppet that you've made because they just work by themselves. You don't have to do very much.
Lyndie: I think it's probably because you're used to them.
Sarah: No, I think it's also true. If I take puppets that you've made to work with students, they can feel that the puppets have a life in them already, before they even know how to move them.
You can just hold your puppets and let them be, all you have to do is give them a little amount of breath or let them look around their world, and they're immediately full of something that you've given them.
Lyndie: But I think being an operator as well as a maker helps because you know what you want from a puppet if you've worked on them. You add that movement into it.
Sarah: But you were making them before you performed them, or both?
Lyndie: Always making first and performing came after. When we first opened the Little Angel, we all had to do everything: sell the tickets, make the coffee, work the puppets. I slowly became a working, operating puppeteer. But there are some people who are just born as wonderful operators, and others have to learn. I had to learn.
Sarah: When you stopped performing, was that because of necessity, or had you just had enough at that point, or were you too busy making?
Lyndie: I think I've just been busy making, yes. I see other people operating them better than I do, so I might as well get on with the making.
Puppeteers in Sync, Puppets Breathing
Sarah: I think being the feet of Angelina in ‘Angelo’ was my first proper job.
Lyndie: When you were probably about eight years old.
Sarah: We were on tour, and everyone had to work because we were travelling.
You couldn't just have kids hanging around without a job. It was lovely to operate your feet, though. It was really fun.
Lyndie: Every puppeteer has a different style, so some people you love working with and others you find really difficult. Some puppeteers are very generous when sharing the puppet, and others find it quite difficult to share a puppet.
In a way, you have to have a whole choreography worked out because you've got to know what your other puppeteers are going to do. I think some of our directors have found it difficult because we always have to stop and talk about things and to know where we're going with them.
Sarah: We were always just working out how she's going to move her leg and whether it goes on the left hand or the right hand. But it's also possible to follow a puppeteer. I find it easy to follow you as a puppeteer.
Lyndie: Yes, because we've done a lot together. You can also improvise movement. You can feel where the other person is going to go.
Sarah: Or be ready to follow them if it's different.
Lyndie: We have to match our breath with the other person's breath, too, so that we're all breathing in the same way, at the same time. The puppet has to have the same breath, too.
Less is More: How Lyndie Invites the Audience to Fill in the Blanks
Lyndie: The puppets change from very, very tiny ones to ones about seven feet high. It’s always a surprise what you're going to do with them, really.
Sarah: I think this was the first one you made, with a carved head and a leather body.
Lyndie: Yes, and I’ve gone on to produce a lot of others like that.
Sarah: Sewn leather…and then painted with a leather dye?
Lyndie: Dye, yes. For her little riding boots.
Sarah: Did you draw this one before you made her, or did you just make her as you went along?
Lyndie: I sketch them first and then make working drawings of them. I don't remember the drawing. It might just have happened, really.
When you're designing a puppet, you've got to get the movement before it's doing the big movement of its face.
You don't want an enormous grin or anything because, in a way, you want the audience to feel that. So you have to have the moment before it does something in the expression that you're actually designing, so the audience has somewhere to go with the story.
If you give them a great, big, smiling clown, it's nowhere to go. That's it. You've given them everything. But if you can get something like this one, where he hasn't got a set expression yet, the audience imagines that he's enjoying it or he's sad or whatever. They actually put their own thoughts into it with you.
The more they put into it, the more they're going to get out of that performance.
The eyes are always important, too. They've got to have some light there. It's quite good to have a bit of light in the eyes. Glass eyes are always lovely to use. But the eastern, puppeteers, for instance, the Javanese, when they're making shadow puppets, the last thing they cut is the eye.
Because once the eye is there, the puppet has a soul. There's no soul until there's an eye.
Sarah: Your glass eyes can look like they're twinkling with laughter, or sometimes it even looks like tears. They can change.
Lyndie: The silhouette of the figure is always important, too. Companies go in for having moving mouths and moving eyes and things, but we've always chosen to do a stool head and a moving body. I think my husband incorporated ballet movements when he started designing for the ballet.
He was thinking of the whole body performing. So, our figures always have a full body, or certainly, the marionettes and the rod puppets do. Whatever the body's doing tells the audience what's happening.
The Playful Innocence of Puppets
Sarah: So many of your puppets have this sort of playful quality that's just really fun to operate. They've got a cheekiness to them, but you were pretty cheeky as well, weren't you?
Lyndie: I think they've got an innocence, too, which is nice to bring out because I believe innocence is a big part of puppetry.
Very often, the puppeteers are dressed in black, black velvet, or even dark colours so that the puppets are working in shafts of light, and so you don't notice the puppeteers. If you do, they're almost like servants to the puppet.
Children used to come back after shows, and they had no idea that there were people working the puppets. They believed in them completely, and they would glance up and be quite surprised and rather horrified that someone was above them doing something for them.
It's such fun with puppetry because you can do something quite serious, and the next minute, you can make something quite trivial with just the feeling that it can work.
You'd go to puppet festivals, and you'd see wonderful shows that were of a tradition of a thousand years ago, and yet the next thing you'd see was totally abstract shapes, and they all worked, and they were all puppetry. It's a wonderful medium to work in because you never know quite where you're going with the next show.
Sarah and Mr Punch in Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and Other Love Songs) by Kneehigh Theatre.
The Puppetry Family: A Worldwide Community of Artists & Enthusiasts
Sarah: You were saying that the influence of Eastern European puppetry led you to make puppets that weren't string puppets?
Lyndie: There was a lot of touring that went on in the 60s and 70s. A lot of the Eastern European countries would have puppet festivals, and we'd get invited because we were one of the few companies that were only using marionettes at that time.
We were delighted to find the amazing things they were doing, working with tabletop puppets and all sorts of things. We then started introducing those things into our shows, too.
Sarah: Those big shows that were combinations of string puppets with the glove puppets and the rod puppets all combined together were extraordinary. You actually built a theatre that could combine every type of puppetry all at the same time.
Lyndie: The touring was wonderful. We met up with a Chinese company in Bucharest and saw their work, which was absolutely fascinating. 20, 30 years later, we were invited to China and went to see the same company, like great friends. They hadn't been able to do shows for years and years and years, and suddenly, they were allowed to perform again, so they invited us to go and see it.
It's such fun with puppetry because you can do something quite serious, and the next minute, you can make something quite trivial with just the feeling that it can work. You'd go to puppet festivals, and you'd see wonderful shows that were of a tradition of a thousand years ago, and yet the next thing you'd see was totally abstract shapes and they all worked and they were all puppetry. It's a wonderful medium to work in because you never know quite where you're going with the next show.
It was absolutely thrilling because really, it's a small art form. People would say, “Oh, you're going off to Munich, you must go and call on so and so”, who was another puppeteer there. Then, you would discover this new world of puppetry, and you would always be included as part of the family, which was lovely. Wherever you went in the world, you were always part of the whole family of puppetry.
The touring took us all over Europe, to the East, and to America. But where we could, we'd pop it all in the back of the van, and we'd dance along in the front.
It was fun because you would take your whole world with you.
John and I would never have to have a meeting about a show because we would be designing it while we were cleaning our teeth and talking in the morning. We were always connected in some way to what we were doing.
The puppetry was really so much part of every part of your day. It was not only with our family but with the people who worked with us, too.
You didn't mind that, did you?
Sarah: No.
Lyndie: The company got used to you. They were wonderful surrogate parents to you. But there were no babysitters or au pairs or nannies or anything. You just had to be with us all the time, whether playing in the workshop or playing in the theatre.
You children just fitted in with us. With you being the oldest one, the first tour was when you were about five weeks old. It was very much just loading the carrycot into the van with the puppets and everything else, then off you'd go to a theatre somewhere in some town. You were always put under the grand piano if there was one. You would know what they looked like from underneath. There were no disposable nappies, so after shows at night, you'd have to wash the nappies and hang them out in the theatre to dry so that they would be ready for the morning again.
Sarah: It must have been really tough for you because you were working full-time. As lovely as Dad was, he wasn't a hands-on parent like modern fathers. You all had jobs.
Solving Puppet Problems in The Workshop
Sarah: I've seen you work in lots of different spaces, but this workshop is your making space forever.
Lyndie: Yes, it's a wonderful place to work. So much work has been done here. Also, to have a workshop right next to the theatre, where you can make something, try it out, and go straight into the auditorium and put it on the stage and see if it worked. That's just wonderful!
Sarah: Living right next door, too.
Lyndie: My commute is a minute and a half from one door to the other, from my house next door.
Sarah: You were twenty-three years old when you moved into this building. You’ve built it and shaped it. There’s so much flow through the buildings itself.
Lyndie: I've been making now for so many years. I started when I was a child, and I've just gone on making. I never knew when I went to art school that I wanted to be a painter or a puppeteer. Painting felt like it was going to be a lonely life, whereas as a puppeteer, you'd always had this wonderful thing of working with a band of people, which would suit me very well.
This lovely shared life that you have as a puppeteer. And when you marry one, it does help, too!
Sarah: There's always been a real excitement about every phase of puppet making that you do. It's a continual process, but you also are amazing because you take on so many jobs at once.
You do a bit of carving up to a certain point, and then you do a bit of sewing, and then a bit of dyeing, and then a bit of something else.
Lots of people also come to the door and chat while you’re working.
Lyndie: It's wonderful because people come to the door, and we've been here for so long now, so people come who first came as children or even grandchildren, which is just so extraordinary.
It’s amazing, the years that we've been here and the influence that the theatre's had on people's lives.
Become part of Lyndie’s story
The Curious School of Puppetry, founded by her daughter Sarah Wright. This unique school offers puppeteers, artists, and theatre makers the chance to learn from leading professionals through 8-week intensive training programs. Your donation funds bursaries, ensuring that everyone, regardless of their circumstances, has the opportunity to pursue their artistic dreams.